Licence Subscription Ingres/OpenRoads · UK public procurement notice

CPV: Information technology services

Procedure method

Award procedure without prior publication of a call for competition

Legal basis

CELEX · 32014L0024 Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (Directive 2014/24/EU)

Procurement category

Services

Notice status

Awarded without competition

Procurement threshold

Unspecified in notice

Regulatory regime

Standard

Commercial structure

Stand-alone contract (no framework)

Competition type

Direct award (no call for competition)

GPA / WTO covered

Unspecified in notice

Recurring procurement

Unspecified in notice

First published

21 Dec 2023, 09:45 GMT

Last source update

21 Dec 2023, 09:45 GMT

FTS notice number

2023/S 000-037612

Classification (CPV)

Information technology services

Delivery area

UK

Official registry OCID

ocds-h6vhtk-042906 Find a Tender

Why no open competition

The procurement falls outside the scope of application of the directive

Published justification

Regulation 32 exempt: 32(2)(b)(ii) whereby competition is absent for technical reasons.

HSE asserts its belief that Actian UK Ltd. is the only economic operator in the EU that is capable of supporting HSE in respect of delivering the services required. The contract is for licence subscriptions and database hosting. The licences permit the continued use and support of the products on application servers, (hosted) database servers and user licences for use of the products. Actian UK Ltd. owns the intellectual property and copyright; it sells licences and services direct to its customers and the licences and services are not available through resellers or any other third party.  Licences are enabled by a unique key, provided by Actian UK Ltd. without which all products cease to work, functionality ceases and data becomes unavailable.  All of Chemical Regulation Division's (a Division of the Health and Safety Executive) current business systems (circa 90) have been built using Actian's OpenRoad Applications and Ingres Databases.  These systems were first built in 1995, transferred to HSE ownership from DEFRA in 2008 and have been in constant use since then, iterated upon and improved.   Some of these systems are public facing and all 90 systems have to be replaced or decommissioned to allow this product suite to be removed from the HSE IT estate.  As such, they are embedded inextricably in CRD's business operations. The CRD Biocides and Pesticides Transformation Programme (BPT) is targeting the removal of most of these services.  HSE has procured the replacement Case Management and Database System in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the BPT Programme has procured the Systems Integrator to design and build new services which will replace the existing services that are on Actian, ultimately conducting a data migration of data out of Actian and into Dynamics 365.   Consequently, Actian will not be replaced with a "like for like" contract or solution, and will be decommissioned once new services are ready. It was fully anticipated that replacement would be a multi-year activity due to the scale of business process reengineering, design and service development.  The BPT programme is behind schedule due to technical complications and, whilst delivering some replacement services in March 2024, it will not deliver all of its objectives for at least 24 months.   HSE asserts its belief that it is not reasonable technically to expect that alternative services, to those either built on Actian's existing solutions or being developed by the BPT programme, could be procured to design and develop systems before the current replacement programme is expected to deliver its outcomes.  Continued use of Actian is therefore considered the only reasonable technical mechanism to maintain the services supporting HSE regulatory duties alongside delivering its replacement programme.

• Actian UK LTDAwarded supplierGB-COH: 14803170 London, UK

No document links were published on the notice.